Hi there
I am new here and have a question about small fridges. I am using a small (dorm-sized) fridge for a cheese cave. The problem is that the
small freezer compartment seems to get a lot of condensation built up in it, presumably because the fridge is warmer than was meant to
be (keeping it at 54 right now for some Brie). I have my cheese in a plastic box with a damp towel between the lid and the box to provide
humidity (not enough, but better than nothing), so water isnt getting dripped on it, but I was wondering if there is anything I can do
about the freezer? I read a couple places not to disconnect it in case it is the mechanism that cools the whole fridge.
Thanks in advance
Welcome to the forum.
In the wiki (https://cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki/) there are a couple of useful articles that you may not have seen yet:
Cheese Cave Requirements (https://cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki-cheese-cave-requirements/)
Example Cheese Caves (https://cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki-example-cheese-caves/)
The second one is particularly useful.
I believe your choices are to sponge out the excess moisture as needed, or fashion a drain for it. If you can make it drain to one spot and drill a hole to the outside and a collection tray, then you may end up having trouble keeping sufficient humidity inside.
If you just want to keep moisture from dripping on your cheese, get a piece of flexible plastic or metal and make a shield under where it drips and route the water safely to the sides or back of the unit.
There are a number of good threads on cheese caves where people describe how they've dealt with problems in the EQUIPMENT - Aging Cheese, Caves (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,181.0.html) section of the forum.
Caseus, great reply.
catdance, welcome to the forum, to add to Caseus's reply, I have I think a similar style mini-fridge (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,2727.0.html) and it also had significant water condensation in the drip tray under the aluminum freezer, I eventually replaced it with a full size kitchen fridge-freezer with an external thermostat. You are correct, you can't disconnect the freezer as that's where the cooling for the fridge comes from, at least on mine it is.
thank you so much for the replies